AMDVLK 2023.Q1.2 Vulkan Driver Released With Fixes, New Extension

Out today is AMDVLK 2023.Q1.2 as AMD's second open-source Vulkan Linux driver release of the year.

The pace of new AMDVLK tagged releases has certainly been far less than years prior but this official open-source driver seems to be working out well for AMD's purposes and those who opt to use this driver as an alternative to Mesa's Radeon Vulkan "RADV" driver that is popular with enthusiasts and gamers as well as being what is normally shipped out-of-the-box on most Linux distributions.

It's been nearly one month since AMDVLK 2023.Q1.1 while today's v2023.Q1.2 update brings a new extension, fixes a couple issues, and rebuilds against newer Vulkan API headers.

AMDVLK now supports the VK_EXT_physical_device_drm extension. VK_EXT_physical_device_drm is used to allow querying Direct Rendering manager (DRM) properties for physical devices and matching Vulkan physical devices with DRM nodes. This extension has long been supported by the Mesa Vulkan drivers while finally AMDVLK has joined the party.

The two listed fixes with AMDVLK 2023.Q1.2 revolve around Vulkan Conformance Test Suite (CTS) failures being taken care of.

The AMDVLK 2023.Q1.2 sources as well as binaries for Ubuntu and RHEL/CentOS systems can be found via GitHub. It's still on my TODO list soon for some RADV vs. AMDVLK benchmarking with the new Radeon RX 7900 "RDNA3" series graphics cards.